Menna

Menna aims to support small businesses to understand their financial position in a clear, helpful way and to manage their finances better.

Acting as a lending platform, it matches small businesses to eligible finance options, allowing both sides to make better decisions.

“It’s important to us that people have as natural an experience on our platform as possible and are not aware of the tech as they’re using it. We’re interested in creating a human-like experience that replaces traditional avenues of support that aren’t there for small businesses anymore,” says Dan Mines, who co-founded Menna alongside Nick Carlton. “I did my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Cardiff University, and I was drawn back to the vibrant tech scene in south Wales when we started working on this product.

Anyone who has any experience in startups knows that time is precious. Working with Hartree Centre Cardiff Hub has added resource at a crucial time in our journey.

“Our project with Hartree Centre Cardiff Hub will enable us to scale. Our goal is to use open-source or our own language models as we learn more about the user. In the meantime, we have partnered with Google Gemini as our foundational model.

“Our project aims to distinguish the tipping point for us as a business when it becomes worthwhile to invest in expensive hardware and scale our business.”